A Pilgrim’s Journey
I reach the tube station at around 08:30am after a short walk and brief pit stop outside for a second fix. The set-up looks like a food truck. “Oh, how we’ve grown to love a pop-up” the cynic in me screams. It’s a bit fraudulent really because the silver caravan and it’s fold-out canopy have been parked here for the duration of my tenancy. Probably longer, in fact. I debate clearing this detail up with the owner, but what the hell difference does it make. I’m here for the fix, like everyone else, and that’s it. Its the hollow heave before the deep dive underground, and that’s far more important than conceptual discrepancies.
There’s a rhythm. These once-weekly interactions typically pan out the same way. “Morning, Ciaran,” he says as I reach the front of the queue. The name thing is disarmingly familiar, and while I’ve always admired people’s ability to remember fatuous personal information, it’s particularly troubling in this context because I don’t remember introductions ever taking place. Even more troubling is the fact that I don’t know his name. He’s just the coffee guy to me.
We must have done the exchange at some point. It wouldn’t surprise me because most of the time in these sorts of situations I concentrate so hard on the angle of the handshake and getting my own name out in audible English that I overlook the need to absorb the information coming directly at me. Information such as names, and occupations. Ages and home addresses. Friends names and spouses. So now, every morning I listen painfully hard to the other customers in the queue as they exchange early-morning banter in the hope that one will mention it. But they never do. Either they don’t know his name either, and they struggle to store this sort of information all the same, or they’ve sussed me out and are withholding the information maliciously just to watch me struggle. Like a bunch of pop-up coffee-shop sadists. For a minute I consider the possibility and throw a couple of glances to my neighbours before talking myself down.
Most days, I prefer to run or ride to work. The more solitary options. Especially in the sunshine. But the sweatier and more active alternatives cause a consequent build up of spare clothes and dirty kit in my office locker, and that requires regular circulation in order to maintain the expected hygiene standards. As a result, I’m forced to make this weekly pilgrimage on the tube and, like the heat versus noise dilemma, there’s no way to win.
Anyone who lives in a major city with overused transport links will understand this already, but for those of you who are unaware of the London tube system, let me try to break it down for you as best I can: it’s an intricate network of underground and overground railway tracks and tunnels that can get you from one side of town to the other within thirty minutes to an hour for anywhere between £2-4 with a pre-paid contactless card called an Oyster.
That’s the easy bit. What they don’t tell you, though, is that the tube system is also a place where happiness goes to die. There’s another important thing that you have to accept before trying to get anywhere in London: everyone else’s journey is far more important than yours. The respective morning rituals, urgent meetings and personal space requirements of other commuter ants will take precedent over all. And they will crush you with their determination (both metaphorically and physically) if they have to. So it’s elbows-out upon arrival and, for fuck sake, do not even think about making eye contact.
The commuter ant is a furious creature of habit, too. I’ve regularly tried to define my own commuter-characteristics after acute observation just so that I can avoiding falling into the commuter trap, but it’s difficult to avoid. They gather on their familiar platforms in the same spots every single day, and as more people pile into the station, anxious expressions break out across the faces of those nearest the tracks as they inch dangerously closer to the edge in attempt to claim their territory.
Typically, most are so fixated on avoiding human contact altogether though that their eyes remain glued to their smart phone screens or their heavily weathered copies of Metro. There’s the occasional anxious side glance at the arrivals screen, or a wrist watch, but the eye movements are kept to an absolute minimum as it might result in having to acknowledge another human being – And it’s really fucking hard to be a ruthless bastard once you realise that you’re competing with other fellow humans.
There’s a bit more anxious movement as the next train arrives, and even though it’s already pretty compressed when the doors open, nothing will stop the obnoxious from taking their chances. I carefully step into one of the small gaps between the sweaty bodies, trying to cause as little disruption as possible, but within seconds I’m pushed deeper into the carriage and my conscious attempts are swiftly undermined. The Smug Prick who shoves me seems pretty pleased with himself once we’re moving again. He’s scowling, visibly irritated by what he was ‘forced to do’, but also satisfied having proved that more bodies could fit, at the expense of our collective dignity. A classic example of London’s routine passive aggression.
The book that I was reading is now clamped between the forefinger and thumb of my left hand. My left elbow has somehow wedged itself between a man’s lower back and his backpack, and my right arm is pressed into the soft part of a woman’s waist (worth noting here that she’s currently standing like a mummified Egyptian royal). I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. We all look at each other and exchange apologetic glances. “Sorry,” our eyes say, “but given the option, I obviously wouldn’t be groping you so intimately.“
I close my eyes for a minute, willing the bodies to fuck off with all my heart but removing another sense means I quickly lose my balance as the train slows, jutting my elbow a little deeper into my neighbor’s torso with an unsteady wobble. She grimaces. The Smug Prick grins.
I remind myself to stick to buses.
Ciaran O'Neill 